Data problems at Target Canada On March 5, 2013 U.S. retailer Target Corp. opened its first of three pilot Canadian locations in Guelph, Fergus and Milton, Ontario, followed by another 21 stores across Canada a few months later that included Alberta, Manitoba, British Colombia, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The question at the time was not so much whether customers where going to arrive at the stores but whether the stores were ready to take them. Soon after the company opened the doors of the first stores in Canada, the company realized that it was having problems moving products from its distribution centres and onto store shelves. Among the problems, the IT systems at Target Canada were not working as expected. For example, the checkout system didn't process transactions properly, the inventory and sales systems were brand new and no one seemed to fully understand how they worked. However, at the heart of Target Canada problems was not software but data errors contained within the company's IT systems. Target Canada had to manage data from about 75,000 different products. For each of them data about the manufacturer, the model, the universal product code (UPC), the dimensions, the weight, how many can fit into a case for shipping and so on had to be entered into its IT systems. Typically, this information was obtained from vendors before Target employees put it into their SAP ERP system and it required correct data to function properly. It was estimated that information at Targets Canadian IT systems was accurate about 30% of the time when in the U.S. it was between 98% and 99%. Some examples of data errors in Targets Canada IT systems included: product dimensions in inches when they were centimetres; data entered in the wrong order such as width by height by length, instead of length by width by height. Sometimes the wrong currency was used. Item descriptions were vague and important information was missing. In addition, it was not clear what some data meant in the system. For example, "in-DC date," (in-Distribution Centre date) was interpreted by some store managers as meaning the date on which product would arrive at a distribution centre (date of arrival), but vendors would interpret it as the day on which they would actually ship the product to Targets distribution centers (shipment date). As a consequence, shipments from vendors were constantly arriving late. This meant that Targets Canadian head office did not have a clear picture of how the situation was inside stores. IT systems would indicate that items were in stock when the reality was otherwise. As one former employee put it "We almost didn't see what the customer was seeing. We'd look on paper and think we're OK. Then we were go to the store, and it was like, 'Oh my god.'

ques : Figure 12.2 (p. 334), Section 12.1, illustrates a framework for computerized decision analysis. Managing inventory at Target would require a variety of different types of decisions, such as structured decisions that deal with routine or repetitive problems for which standard solutions exist, and unstructured decisions, for which there are no standard procedures and where human intuition and judgment often play an important role.

Structured decision

(i) Provide an example of a structured decision regarding data management for inventory that Target might need to make; (1 mark)

(ii) State what type of software could be used to help finalize or implement the decision and explain why that software is suitable for the decision that you have described; (1 mark)

(iii) Provide an example of how the software that you have described could be used to help with the decision example that you have provided. (1 mark)

Unstructured decision

(i) Provide an example of an unstructured decision regarding inventory management or its supply chain that Target might need to make; (1 mark)

(ii) State what type of software could be used to help finalize or implement the decision and explain why that software is suitable for the decision that you have described; (1 mark)

(iii) Provide an example of how the software that you have described could be used to help with the decision example that you have provided. (1 mark)